A night and a day had passed, and still Artois had not seen Hermione. The
autopsy had been finished, and had revealed nothing to change the theory
of Dr. Marini as to the determining cause of death. The English stranger
had been crossing the dangerous wall of rock, probably in darkness, had
fallen, been stunned upon the rocks in the sea beneath, and drowned
before he recovered consciousness.
Gaspare said nothing. Salvatore held his peace and began his preparations
for America. And Maddalena, if she wept, wept now in secret; if she
prayed, prayed in the lonely house of the sirens, near the window which
had so often given a star to the eyes that looked down from the terrace
of the Casa del Prete.
There was gossip in Marechiaro, and the Pretore still preserved his air
of faint suspicion. But that would probably soon vanish under the
influence of the Cancelliere, with whom Artois had had some private
conversation. The burial had been allowed, and very early in the morning
of the day following that of Hermione's arrival at the hotel it took
place from the hospital.
Few people knew the hour, and most were still asleep when the coffin was
carried down the street, followed only by Hermione, and by Gaspare in a
black, ready-made suit that had been bought in the village of Cattaro.
Hermione would not allow any one else to follow her dead, and as Maurice
had been a Protestant there was no service. This shocked Gaspare, and
added to his grief, till Hermione explained that her husband had been of
a different religion from that of Sicily, a religion with different
rites.
"But we can pray for him, Gaspare," she said. "He loved us, and perhaps
he will know what we are doing."
The thought seemed to soothe the boy. He kneeled down by his padrona
under the wall of the Campo Santo by which Protestants were buried, and
whispered a petition for the repose of the soul of his padrone. Into the
gap of earth, where now the coffin lay, he had thrown roses from his
father's little terreno near the village. His tears fell fast, and his
prayer was scarcely more than a broken murmur of "Povero
signorino--povero signorino--Dio ci mandi buon riposo in Paradiso."
Hermione could not pray although she was in the attitude of supplication;
but when she heard the words of Gaspare she murmured them too. "Buon
riposo!" The sweet Sicilian good-night--she said it now in the stillness
of the lonely dawn. And her tears fell fast with those of the boy who had
loved and served his master.